"Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s"
1999-07-01 until 1999-09-13
Los Angeles County Museum
Los Angeles, CA, USA United States of America

At the end of the nineteenth century, painters in Paris took to making original prints in greater numbers than ever before. Young and old, many of the most inventive artists of the day worked closely with adventurous publishers and skillful professional printers to create an astonishing number of unforgettable images of Paris in the 1890s. At a time when etching still enjoyed its prestige as the most suitable medium for original printmaking, other, more commercial methods began to find favor. Woodcut and lithography, both standard techniques for mass-produced illustration, now began to be used by daring young painters, resulting in entrancing color prints that were published in strictly limited editions.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art—LACMA—is pleased to present Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s. On loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this exhibition features 122 prints by 33 artists, including 22 lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec. Representing an important period of development in the history of printmaking, the exhibition will be on view at LACMA from July 1 to September 13, 1999.

In the exhibition, the Impressionists are represented by Degas, Pissaro, and Cassat; the Symbolists by Redon, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Carriere; and the Nabis by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Vallotton. For decades the number of contemporary collectors with a taste for such avant-garde prints remained small, so that many of these editions did not sell out until well into the twentieth century. During the 1940s Carl Zigrosser, as the new curator of prints and drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was still able to acquire the majority of the prints on view in this exhibition for relatively moderate sums. Happily, Zigrosser’s astute purchases included pristine sets of the three most celebrated color print albums of the 1890s by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which together form the heart of this exhibition.

LACMA’s permanent collection includes more than 110,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. The museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational, aesthetic, intellectual and cultural experiences for its visitors. In addition, LACMA offers an ever-changing series of outstanding special exhibitions of the work from the world’s leading artists, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs and musical events. Through its Institute for Art and Cultures, it serves as a leader and convener of Southern California cultural and educational institutions for the exchange of ideas and cultivation of new perspectives on the interaction of art and society.

Credit Line: This exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art from its permanent collection.

Curator: Victor Carlson, senior curator of prints and drawings at LACMA.

Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue written by John Ittmann, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of prints and organizer of the exhibition.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in Los Angeles